US, China chart clashing courses to make more babies

Within a single week in early March 2026, Beijing unveiled a sweeping five-year plan to build a “childbirth-friendly society,” committing 180 billion yuan (US$25.8 billion) to free prenatal care, IVF coverage, childcare subsidies and housing support for families.

Across the Pacific, the Trump administration continued a markedly different pro-natalist drive — centered on a $1,000 “baby bonus” and discounted IVF drugs — while simultaneously rolling back contraceptive access and family-planning funding.

The world’s two largest economies now agree on the diagnosis—too few babies—but their diverging prescriptions offer a revealing stress test for every government in Asia grappling with the same arithmetic.

Carrot and stick

China’s approach is essentially a massive public-investment bet. The government pledges zero out-of-pocket pregnancy expenses, expanded free preschool and education spending locked above 4% of GDP.

It is simultaneously building a “silver economy” for a population in which those over 60 will reach 400 million by 2035—roughly the combined populations of the United States and Italy. Childcare, health tech and elder services are being positioned as exportable industries, not just domestic obligations.

The US approach is harder to categorize. It pairs modest financial incentives with moves that gut reproductive infrastructure: defunding Title X services, stripping Planned Parenthood of Medicaid funding and ordering the destruction of nearly $10 million in contraceptives destined for developing countries.

Proposals have included a “motherhood medal” for women with six or more children and reserving 30% of Fulbright scholarships for married applicants or parents. Fertility has been absorbed into a right-wing narrative about national strength and demographic “replacement”—an ethnonational frame with long global consequences.

In structural terms, China is lowering the cost curve of parenthood. The US is narrowing the menu of alternatives to it. Neither has strong evidence of success. Research suggests pro-natalist policies may at best raise fertility by 0.1–0.2 births per woman, with most interventions producing no durable long-term change.

Why Asia is watching

East Asia is the global epicenter of demographic decline. Japan recorded just 705,809 births in 2025—its tenth consecutive annual drop. Taiwan has overtaken South Korea for the world’s lowest fertility rate. Singapore’s total fertility rate fell below 1.0 for the third straight year, hitting a record low of 0.87 in 2025.

South Korea’s modest rebound to 0.80 in 2025, while encouraging, still leaves it among the lowest in the OECD. Every one of these governments is searching for models that work.

China’s infrastructure-heavy approach resonates with the East Asian developmental tradition — the idea that government can engineer social outcomes through coordinated spending. If Beijing’s zero-cost pregnancy policy produces even a marginal uptick in births, expect Tokyo, Seoul and Singapore to study the playbook closely.

The American approach carries a different kind of influence: a cautionary one. When Washington eliminates international family-planning assistance and orders the destruction of $9.7 million in contraceptives already paid for by US taxpayers, the ripple effects reach Southeast Asia, South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa directly.

For Asian governments that have relied on US support for reproductive health programs, the signal is unmistakable—Washington is an unreliable partner when domestic pronatalism is tied to restricting contraception abroad.

Lessons unlearned

Here is what both approaches miss: declining fertility is not primarily a policy failure. It is a rational response by individuals—overwhelmingly women—to rising education, expanding economic opportunity, unaffordable housing and the staggering cost of raising children in modern economies.

China’s one-child policy spent decades training its population to regard small families as virtuous. Reversing that cultural shift with subsidies alone is an enormous ask. In the US, survey data consistently show that Americans already prefer small families and do not experience declining birth rates as a personal crisis.

The deeper truth is that pro-natalism of any variety treats a symptom while ignoring the underlying condition. The real challenge is not how to produce more workers, but how to restructure pension systems, labor markets and immigration policy for a world where below-replacement fertility is the new and permanent norm.

Japan’s natural population decline now exceeds 899,000 people per year, while projections suggest China’s population could fall by 100-150 million people by 2050 at current fertility rates below the 2.1 replacement level. No baby bonus closes those gaps.

Asian policymakers would do well to study both experiments not so much for answers, but for cautionary evidence. China’s dual-track adaptation — modest fertility support plus serious investment in a smaller, older society — is the more honest model. The US, despite enormous untapped potential in childcare, paid leave and health coverage, has chosen identity over institutions.

The most constructive lesson for Asia is not to choose Beijing’s or Washington’s model. It is to decouple demographic resilience from coercion, from culture war and from nostalgia for a high-fertility past that neither technology nor policy is likely to ever restore.

Y. Tony Yang is an Endowed Professor at the George Washington University in Washington, D.C.